Does Pitchfork Have a Race Problem? (article about the Chief Keef gun range video)

[RTF]

@mbewane he's 17 years old man. An adult taking any troubled 17 year old to a gun-range for entertainment needs to have a serious look in the mirror.

It's bad enough if it was just one person's idea. But someone had to come up with this idea, co-sign it. Do it and publish it, that whole period at least took 2-3 days to put together. No one with power thought "hey this is pretty messed up man".

 

[RTF]

I see your point. Its definitely way bigger than Pitchfork. And Pitchfork would probably call for any white gangsta rapper to be hung-drawn-and-quartered before he got his foot in the door.

I always get a kick out of how whimsical and charming a review for "Kush and Kodeine Part 3" (or whatever) is. The content is blatantly misogynistic and homophobic, but its just "light-hearted silly fun" and gets completely overlooked. They'll make light fun of how ignorant it is, and then give it 7.9 or some shyt

Yet, when a hip-hop artist comes along with some type of "message" or social angle, the sirens go off and they start fact-checking, cred-assessing and COMBING through the material for inaccuracies and hypocrisies. They'll dismiss the message as being "trite" or boring, and hershey-bomb all over that artist.

I get it, a lot of conscious rap is pretty corny and cliche, but the other guy was saying the SAME EXACT TIRED shyt on EVERY song and its charming to them The guy who's trying to present hip-hop in a intellectual, moral way gets put on the chopping block, is scrupulously vetted, and basically "guilty till proven innocent"

Basically if hip-hop wants to be serious, its forced to get on their intellectual level and speak to them in a language they respect. Otherwise, to get a good review it needs to be extremely childish and ignorant enough to be a "guilty pleasure"

Its not ALL bad with them, and they still do some great reviews from time to time, but it would be nice to see them be as fair to hip-hop as they are with every trendy disposable 7" or EP made by a gang of scrawny, androgynous CACs that no one will care about in 2 weeks

 

[Harry B]

If we're taking non-indie
Pitchfork promotes shyt that's exciting, Chief Keef was exciting strictly for his young age and handicap ways, but they promoted Killer Mikr just as much cause he was exciting as well. They do not support Eminem anymore cause he's not exciting and on.
They used to support K dot and ASAP back when they were exciting and it goes on. It's not a lifestyle/music mag, they do not give two fukks about social issues, clothes, and whatever the fukk. All they care about is indie music and interesting commercial artists.


Imo it's the best music site out there cause it focuses on a very large range of artists from cats who sell 5 copied to 3 million. Freddie Gibbs might get as much first page time as Jay-z Tame Impala or Foxygen or Chief Keef. That's the dope thing.

As far as the keef thing goes, that can not be defended it was stupid and evil to take advantage of the situation in Chicago to make a dope interview. But I don't know why one article from one writer would mean anything, at all.

 

[NvrCMyNut]

should pitchfork be sh!t on for exploiting a ghetto youth? Yes, they took chief to the gun range but they are hardly alone in playing up the glorification of the dead end loser ''gangsta'' lifestyle, pretty much every hiphop based media outlet does this & on a more regular basis than these mainstream(white) motherfukkers.

Now ask yourself why? I see posts about white infatuation with urban fantasy, like black people aren't infatuated with it either, like most black dudes don't live vicariously through these nikkas. Like you didn't see a ton of GBE stans start to pop up & get their ''real nikka'' following up after lil JOJO got killed. The threads are there, use the search button.

Complete exoneration & lack of accountability on both the fans & the artists & only taking a corporate entity to task is so 1992, but i guess the romance of it hasn't got tired yet

 

[mbewane]

@mbewane he's 17 years old man. An adult taking any troubled 17 year old to a gun-range for entertainment needs to have a serious look in the mirror.

It's bad enough if it was just one person's idea. But someone had to come up with this idea, co-sign it. Do it and publish it, that whole period at least took 2-3 days to put together. No one with power thought "hey this is pretty messed up man".

I see where you're coming from breh, but I'm sick and tired of applauding people (in this case, Keef) because they're "gangsta", "keeping it real" all the while screamin 3hunna and all that bs and then turn around and be like oh poor little CHief he got taken advantage of by a website. Let's flip the script: doesn't Keef have people, management, friends, family that can advise him, or we're just going to dismiss all of them on some "oh they're troubled/from the ghetto, they don't know better". They were probably like "Yeah gun range, Beng beng". Is it a stupid idea, of course it is, but that's coming from my personnal standpoint against gun use, not the fact that Keef was involved. Dude's WHOLE CAREER is based on ignorant shyt and we're supposed to feel sorry for him?

 

[RTF]

@mbewane Chief Keef seemingly doesn't listen to his representatives very much. I know that much.

I've never seen a hip-hop website take any gangsta rappers to gun ranges, let alone teenagers. A lot of "black" media outlets talk about how real and gutter the music is and that whole scene. Not the actual individuals real life.

That's the difference breh. Music and real life. Rick Ross whole steez and popularity is just off the music. AT worst, we encourage him to say gangsta stuff. Pitchfork took it to another, all the more real level.

Listen to Gucci interviews. They often intimidated by him and at worst make jokes of how real he is. they don't actively encouraghe him.

 

[mbewane]

@mbewane Chief Keef seemingly doesn't listen to his representatives very much. I know that much.

I've never seen a hip-hop website take any gangsta rappers to gun ranges, let alone teenagers. A lot of "black" media outlets talk about how real and gutter the music is and that whole scene. Not the actual individuals real life.

That's the difference breh. Music and real life. Rick Ross whole steez and popularity is just off the music. AT worst, we encourage him to say gangsta stuff. Pitchfork took it to another, all the more real level.

Listen to Gucci interviews. They often intimidated by him and at worst make jokes of how real he is. they don't actively encouraghe him.

I hear you, and tbh I don't even read Pitchfork that much. I don't care about which media outlet it is we're talking about, once you step into that arena as an "artist" (very loosely used when talking about Keef), you're in the spotlight and you have a certain persona. Keef's whole persona is about beng beng, he chose that (unless we want to go with the whole "victim of circumstances" PC thing). So one of two things happens: you play that role all that way (keeping it "real", which is maybe why you had people bigging up GBE when Lil Jojo or whatever his name is got killed smh) or you realize it's just a role (Ross). If Keef's too stupid to realize it should only be a role, I'm sincerely sorry but I don't give a fukk about him, real talk. And even LESS if he doens't listen to his representatives, that means he belives he knows better than they do, so he should take responsibility for his own actions.

Sorry breh, it's not like he had a gun to his head and HAD to go to that gun range. And why is this article being brought up now anyway? That shyt happened a couple of months ago.

 

[Sam Peel]

it is racial based. they dont promote overly-violent white gangsta rappers.

what violent white rappers are taken seriously?

 

[Cole Cash]

@mbewane he's 17 years old man. An adult taking any troubled 17 year old to a gun-range for entertainment needs to have a serious look in the mirror.

It's bad enough if it was just one person's idea. But someone had to come up with this idea, co-sign it. Do it and publish it, that whole period at least took 2-3 days to put together. No one with power thought "hey this is pretty messed up man".

Taking that kid to the gun range and feeding into exagerrated "gangster super thug" image these kids aim for was not only irresponsible but really indictive to how these people feel about us as a whole.

Im sure the same idiot taking him to the gun range was crying foul and whining for gun control after sandy hook but has no issue taking a young impeessionble youth to shoot a gun because hes killing his own or discussing killing his own. The entire thing makes me sick

 

[Suicide King]

I hate that Questlove style of writing so much.....

K-Os made a great point about Chief Keef then kinda went off-the-rails a bit. Its not as RACIAL as it is CLASS-BASED imo. The reviews reek of privilege, and that can possibly account for why they love the most ratchety, piss-poor neighborhood stuff. The homie @gator_king on here uses the term "urban fantasy" a lot, and it really applies to Pitchfork. The writers and their reader-base are so far removed from that type of life that they find it fascinating. Whether thats in a "OMG Gucci Mane can I touch your tattoo?!?!?!" kinda way, or a patronizing "well this isnt that cute, give him an A for effort" kinda way....I cant honestly say.

Pitchfork's infatuation with "gangsta shyt" is pretty well-documented. It seems like they aim to be the gate-keepers of high culture. If something is in fact great, somehow they already knew about it every-step-of-the-way and can go through all of the pedantic motions so you, the Pitchfork reader, can also feel self-important, relevant, and be brought up-to-speed on the latest thing you should care about, or pretentiously dismiss without listening to.

Their writers can systematically tell you, in perfect written English, as efficiently as an anti-virus scan result report...the differences between MATH ROCK and ART ROCK....yet they have a soft-spot in their bellies for good ol fashioned REAL GANGSTA shyt and go after the rest of Hip-Hop with a venomous zeal of critical fact-checking and credibility assessments

I think the Liberal Arts are an extremely interesting field of study (many vault into Law School from there). Its definitely something that everyone should know at least a little bit about, but I cant help but feel like many of its degree-holders end up being left with few options in life.....snotty, self-loathing, bitter critic/blogger being one of them.

Very hard to agree, because I understand the sarcasm when they promote of brilliance Lil 'B or Gucci Mane.

Compared to the average fan on The Coli, AT LEAST their critique goes beyond, NY lost, the South makes good music andthatsallIcareaboutit, Budden/Nas/etc. has too many L's. If someone is new to hip-hop I rather they go on Pitchfork than come on Coli. At least on Pitchfork you can tell when they get it all wrong, like when they criticized Lupe's bytch Bad. They are not as out of touch as Rolling Stones, and I read some stuff that was right on the money.

But on here you get countless threads on record sales and jungle music coming out of the South. Most of the time, these posters are in high school or still living at their mom house so they troll the net all day. You already know college folks are not doing 80 posts a day.

 

[RTF]

@suicide_king average the-coli poster is in their early 20's if you go by the age threads.

 

[Non Sequitur]

Their writers can systematically tell you, in perfect written English, as efficiently as an anti-virus scan result report...the differences between MATH ROCK and ART ROCK....yet they have a soft-spot in their bellies for good ol fashioned REAL GANGSTA shyt and go after the rest of Hip-Hop with a venomous zeal of critical fact-checking and credibility assessments

I think the reason for this may be that rock music has become almost completely cerebral at this point. There's no more new rock music that activates that reptilian part of your brain that just wants to eat, sleep, fight, fukk bytches, and just generally fukk shyt up anymore.

HipHop still has plenty of that, though


Maybe they don't want HipHop to turn into the giant, self-aware, vaginal musical circle-jerk that rock has. They want to keep that nihilism and rebelliousness that we all love intact

 

[Tetris v2.0]

I think the reason for this may be that rock music has become almost completely cerebral at this point. There's no more new rock music that activates that reptilian part of your brain that just wants to eat, sleep, fight, fukk bytches, and just generally fukk shyt up anymore.

HipHop still has plenty of that, though


Maybe they don't want HipHop to turn into the giant, self-aware, vaginal musical circle-jerk that rock has. They want to keep that nihilism and rebelliousness that we all love intact

Great point, and I actually hope for the same too.

Still I cant help but feel that at times, Pitchfork is scared of going against the grain with hip-hop. They'll never shyt on the sheer ignorant stuff, even when its terrible, cause they wanna be "down" with whatevers popping in ratchet clubs.

Pitchfork is a MAJOR BRAND themselves, and are the go-to posterchildren of "indie hipster" (yes, a very blanket term) critique. Theyve broken a lot of acts and a lot of indie bands owe a great part of their success to the site. Its a barometer of "cool" and high-culture. They have a reputation to maintain. Auto-praising the hip-hop that "the real gangstaz and houde-lums in da skreets" are bumping is a great way of quickly re-assuring the readers that they're up on the latest and have their finger on the pulse.

Even when you read their reviews, they look at the big picture. They assess the type of fan that artist has, and review THEM too. Many times the actual music on the album is mentioned as an after-thought.

Sometimes you cant help but wonder if they reviewed a mixtape with their eyes closed, or if they reviewed an advanced copy before the "hot" songs take off.....if they would be as generous and forgiving as they are

 

[Non Sequitur]

Great point, and I actually hope for the same too.

Still I cant help but feel that at times, Pitchfork is scared of going against the grain with hip-hop. They'll never shyt on the sheer ignorant stuff, even when its terrible, cause they wanna be "down" with whatevers popping in ratchet clubs.

Even when you read their reviews, they look at the big picture. They assess the type of fan that artist has, and review THEM too. Sometimes the actual music on the album is mentioned as an after-thought

Sometimes you cant help but wonder if they reviewed a mixtape with their eyes closed, or if they reviewed an advanced copy before the "hot" songs take off.....if they would be as generous and forgiving as they are

In a perfect world, all we would care about is the music...but image matters, an artist's fanbase's image matters, context matters.

But, the music comes first and sometimes they lose sight of that.

 

[Tetris v2.0]

In a perfect world, all we would care about is the music...but image matters, an artist's fanbase's image matters, context matters.

But, the music comes first and sometimes they lose sight of that.

Of course, but with them, the nerdy hip-hop fan who's shy and awkward and likes music that speaks to his/her life experiences.....ranks much lower on the totem pole than the equivalent nerdy lo-fi art-house awkward kid that likes the same things in his/her preferred realm

Theres a massive double-standard. Hip-hop is taken seriously only when it proves itself worthy by Pitchfork standards. The preferred indie-esque artists don't get vetted for being experimental like when rappers do